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Abraham Lincoln's
Contemporaries
Zachary Taylor
Excerpts from newspapers and other
sources
From the files of the
Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
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TORT WAYNE NEWS-SENTINEL
Sat., June 15, 1891
Author
suspects
presidential
poisoning
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)
— The crypt of Zachary Tay-
lor will be opened Monday to
check out an author's theory
that the 12th U.S. president
was poisoned.
Taylor's
cause of
death was
listed as
gastroen-
teritis fol-
lowing his
sudden ill-
ness and
death al-
most 141
Taylor > e <^°-
U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs gave approval yester-
day for Jefferson County Cor-
oner Richard Greathouse to
open the crypt in the Zachary
Taylor National Cemetery
that contains the remains of
Taylor and his wife,
Margaret.
Clara Rising of Holder,
Fla., who is writing a book
about Taylor, planned to be
present when Greathouse
removes a sample of Taylor's
remains for analysis.
Dr. William Maples, a
forensic anthropologist at the
University of Florida in Gain-
esville who specializes in skel-
etal remains, also is expected
to be on hand. He believes
Taylor's symptoms were con-
sistent with arsenic poisoning.
If Taylor's death turns out
to be a homicide, he would
displace Abraham Lincoln,
the nation's 16th president, as
the first American president
known to be assassinated.
But Dr. Elbert B. Smith,
professor emeritus of the Uni-
versity of Maryland Depart-
ment of History, said he'd be
"shocked and astounded" if
there was evidence that Tay-
lor was poisoned.
Taylor died of gastroen-
teritis, which became acute
because of malpractice by his
physicians, Smith said.
The author of the recent
book, "The Presidencies of
Zachary Taylor and Millard
Fillmore," Smith said there
would have been no motive or
opportunity to kill Taylor.
Rising said other political
leaders wanted to get rid of
Taylor because he opposed
extending slavery into lands
the United States acquired
after the Mexican War.
"I truly believe that if this
man had lived, he may have
been able to prevent the Civil
War," Rising said.
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AP LASERPHOTO
1850 death
probed
The crypt of Zachary Taylor
will be opened Monday to test
an author's theory that the
12th president was assassin-
ated with poisoned fruit
141 years ago because of his
opposition to the spread of
slavery. The U.S. Department
of Veterans Affairs granted
approval Friday for a coroner
to open the crypt in the
Zachary Taylor National Cem-
etery in Louisville, Ky., to see
whether there's any trace of
poison by analyzing a piece of
hair, fingernail or bone. At the
coroner's side will be author
Clara Rising.
Back to the Future, again.
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Turned Over in His Grave
i
When William Shakespeare was entombed 375
years ago, a bit of doggerel •** the playwright's
work, but not up to his usual standard — was
inscribed on the stone. "Good friend for Jesus' sake
forbear / To dig the dust enclosed here. / Blest be
the man that spares these stones, / And curst be he
that moves my bones." So far, despite countless
pleas from people with a point to prove, nobody has.
President Zachary Taylor should have been so
foresighted.
President Taylor died on July 9, 1850, after
overexerting himself at the cornerstone-laying of
the Washington Monument, overeating iced cher-
ries and ice milk and suffering the "cures" of
several doctors. That, at least, is the official story
and the one believed by most historians. But not by
Clara Rising, a former humanities professor at the
University of Florida.
Ms. Rising, who is working on a book about
Taylor, believes America's 12th President was the
first to be assassinated. Having been told by a
pathologist that Taylor's symptoms were similar to
those of arsenic poisoning, Ms. Rising persuaded"
the county coroner, Dr. Richard Greathouse, to
issue an exhumation order. The Department of
Veterans Affairs, which runs the Kentucky ceme-
tery where Taylor is buried, quickly complied.
That's all it took for a sadly crumpled coffin,
shrouded in a badly folded flag, to be removed from
the crypt in which it was placed 141 years ago. If
arsenic is indeed present, it could be from the
doctors' concoctions or embalming fluid. If there
was a crime, the clues are long since lost. Never
mind. Dr. Greathouse is "thrilled" by his participa-
tion, and Ms. Rising speaks of solving what she says
could become one of the strangest murder myster-
ies in American history.
Sometimes there are good reasons for tamper-
ing with a grave. Serious historical evidence estab-
lishing the possibility that President Taylor was
assassinated would be one. But Ms. Rising has
produced no such evidence, only a hypothesis for
which she found an eager collaborator.
Perhaps there are secrets to be found in what
was left of President Taylor, who was returned to
his crypt on the evening after his exhumation. All
that's been revealed so far, however, is a cavalier
contempt for the dead.
I
Observer
RUSSELL BAKER* »•
Grave Confounded
After Bing Crosby died his son
Gary published a book saying his dad
had been a truly terrible father. This
prompted Bob Hope to observe, "It's
not even safe to die anymore."
Zachary Taylor, former President
of the United States, dead since 1850,
might have said, "Bob never spoke a
truer line," had he been capable of
issuing a press release when the
knock came at his mausoleum door
the other day. He was about to be
hauled out for further study. Someone
writing a book suspected he may
have been poisoned, so an obliging
Is nobody safe
from science?
coroner had agreed to subject him to
the indignities modern science is
uniquely qualified to inflict.
This follows by only a few months a
decision to let scientists have a crack
at cloning some Abraham Lincoln
cells so they can learn whether the
Great Emancipator suffered from a
disease nobody even knew about in
Lincoln's time: something that has to
do with making people tall, gangling
and loose-limbed.
It's tempting to justify this by tell-
ing the scientists, "Find out what
disease Lincoln had and send some to
all our Presidents." Alas, however,
knowing science's mad-doctorish
passion to make the 150-year-old hu-
man a commonplace, we can be sure
that the knowledge would not be used
to improve Presidents but to wipe out
a potentially invaluable disease.
Is nobody safe from a prying sci-
ence driven by righteous curiosity?
One of the few consolations of the
grave used to be that you could take
your secrets there with the certainty
that they would be safe from busy-
bodies. Its power to make secrecy
eternal helped people keep life in per-
spective.
One stood beside the grave while
clergy uttered the closing words,
and one of the thoughts that ran
through your mind was: "Now I'll
never know ..."
After awhile it seemed not so im-
portant that you could never know,
and as time did its work you realized
that one of life's conditions was that
/ou would never be allowed to know
is much as you wanted to know. Life
urrounded us with mysteries, which
could be maddening unless you re-
laxed and enjoyed the way they en-
riched life's texture.
Solve a mystery, it becomes a bore.
As Edmund Wilson asked of Agatha
Christie's whodunnit: "Who Cares
Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Some
mysteries enchant us so intensely
that we reject any evidence that
would deprive us of the pleasure of
their company. A hundred years from
now Americans will still be arguing
whether Lee Harvey Oswald did it all
by himself, or at all.
The impulse to take the fun out of
life by solving all the mysteries is as
old as Adam. What's new is the scien-
tific skill we can now apply to the job.
As it increases, the wretched dead
will have more and more reason to lie
uneasy in their graves awaiting the
dreadful knock which signals that the
lab boys have arrived.
"Aha, my good man, we have come
for your secrets. No use making a
fuss about it. And don't think you can
hold anything back. Nowadays we
have ways of making you talk."
Disturbing dead Presidents to sat-
isfy modern curiosity is barbaric
enough now when inquisitive science
can examine them only for problems
like arsenic and loose-limb disease.
Imagine the complications when sci-
ence perfects methods to solve more
complex mysteries.
In recent years, for instance, some
people have insisted that Lincoln, de-
spite the superficial evidence (the
Civil War, the Emancipation Procla-
mation, etc.) was, in fact, actually a
racist.
At present scientists cloning Lin-
coln's cells may be able to find dis-
eases he didn't know he had. They
will assure you, however, that they
will never be able to clone a complete
Lincoln which can be strapped to a lie
detector and examined for inner feel-
ings of bigotry.
They always laugh and call such
suggestions "Buck Rogers stuff."
Then they do it all: space stations,
spliced genes in pig blood, the full
Buck Rogers/Doctor Huer bonanza.
Poor old Abe. I can see him already
cloned, strapped to the machine, Pen-
tagon security experts watching the
needles jump.
"Have you been cloned, Mr. Lin-
coln?"
"I have indeed, gentlemen."
"All right; Lincoln. Give it to us
straight from the shoulder: You're a
racist, aren't you?"
In the immortal words of Fats Wal-
ler, "Mercy!" D
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LYNCH FOR THE JOURNAL-GAZETTE
Well, there's no arsenic in Zachary Taylor's bones, but it's the 150-year-old bottle
of Kentucky bourbon we found in his casket that we'd like to keep secret.
fl| V,.. i - *t-.
Comment
The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette
Tuesday, June 25, 1991 5A
Taylor's death more than a footnote to history
By MARTIN D. TULL Al
Was Zachary Taylor murdered? Did a
dastardly assassin poison him with arsenic-
laden fruit, thereby causing his death
July 9, 1850?
Apparently Dr. William Maples, a foren-
sic anthropologist, believes this might be
the case. He received permission to remove
samples of Taylor's remains for an analysis
in an attempt to validate this claim.
Newspaper reports have made much of
the fact that history books would have to
be rewritten should Taylor's death be con-
firmed a homocide because he, and not our
16th president, Abraham Lincoln, would
then be the first chief executive
assassinated.
However, while this bit of trivia would
need correcting, Taylor's death in 1850 had
a much greater impact on the history of the
United States.
Showdown on slavery
In late 1849 and 1850, a controversy
erupted over the new territories obtained
from Mexico as a result of the Mexican
War — the so-called Mexican Cession. This
included present-day California, Nevada,
Utah. Arizona, New Mexico and parts of
Colorado and Wyoming.
Southerners were upset because Califor-
nia had adopted. late in 1849, a constitution
as a free state and sought admission into
the union. This threatened the balance in
the Senate between the free and slave
states. Although a southerner by birth
(from Virginia) and the owner of more
than 100 slaves. President Taylor strongly
supported California's admission. However,
Congress did not act.
But other problems also existed. Fearing
New Mexico would follow California's
example, Texas, a slave state, claimed a
huge area that was about half of New
Mexico. Tensions grew, and it appeared
as if Texas might use force to make its
point.
Concerns also were heard regarding the
disposition of the rest of the Mexican Ces-
sion. Would it be free or slave?
To resolve these issues, the elder states-
men of that day produced a series of bills.
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Stephen
Douglas were primarily responsible for this
work, which came to be known collectively
as the Compromise of 1850. Actually five
separate bills, these compromise measures
provided for the following:
California was to become a free state.
The rest of the Mexican Cession was
formed into the territories of New Mexico
and Utah without restriction as to slavery
— popular sovereignty would prevail.
The territory in dispute between Texas
and New Mexico was given to the latter,
and Texas was paid J10 million in
compensation.
The slave trade (but not slavery) was
abolished in Washington, D.C.
And a more stringent fugutive slave law
was to be enacted.
Zachary Taylor accepted the California
provision but rejected those aspects of the
compromise favorable to the South.
In the meantime (June 3-12, 1850) a
group of dissatisfied southerners from nine
states met at Nashville, Tenn. — The Nash-
ville Convention — "to devise and adopt
some mode of resistance" to northern
aggressions. Meeting prior to the resolution
of the issues with the Compromise of 1850,
they offered solutions designed to protect
their interests. But rumbles of discontent
and disquieting talk of secession were also
heard.
Argument academic
With the death of Zachary Taylor July 9,
1850, the situation changed drastically.
(Taylor had attended outdoor festivities at
the Washington Monument July 4, where
he sat through two hours of speeches
under a blazing sun. Reiurning to the White
SUT*€RS FOR THE ORLANDO SENTiNa
House, he wolfed down some cherries and
a pitcher of cold milk. He developed what
the doctors diagnosed as cholera morbus, a
gastrointestinal upset, from which he never
recovered.)
Taylor's successor, Millard Fillmore, had
presided over the great Senate debate in his
role as vice president. He informed Taylor
that in case of a deadlock, he was pre-
pared to cast the tie-breaking vote in favor
of the five bills. This was not because of
hostility to the administration, Fillmore
explained, but because he believed it was in
the nation's best interest. So, with Fill-
more now president, passage of the Com-
promise of 1850 became a foregone
conclusion.
There is little doubt Taylor would have
vetoed the compromise had he lived. This
would have ied to increased sectional ten-
sion and probably war. In fact, no less a
contemporary figure than Daniel Webster
declared he was convinced that Taylor's
death prevented the outbreak of war in
1850.
South might have won
Suppose Taylor had lived. What would
have been the consequence of a violent
showdown in 1850? The South would have
benefited to an appreciable degree. Time
was on the side of the North. With every
passing decade, the North gained in popula-
tion and wealth — crops, factories, foun-
dries, ships and railroads.
Delay also added to the moral strength
of the North — to its will to fight for the
Union.
So the decade of the 1850s gave the
North time to accumulate the physical and
moral strength that gave it the edge when
the war finally erupted. As historian
Thomas A. Bailey has noted: "Thus the
Compromise of 1850, from one point of
view, won the Civil War for the union."
And whether he was assassinated or
died because of his own lack of good judg-
ment, this is the significance of Zachary
Taylor's death in 1850.
Martin D. Tullai is chairman of the history
department at St. Paul's School in Brook-
landville, Md.
:'
Posthumous probe proceeds
Tests to illuminate or eliminate president's poisoning
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -
Applying high technology to unlock
a mystery from the 19th century,
scientists bombarded President
Zachary Taylor's remains with neu-
trons and analyzed them with com-
puters to learn whether he was
poisoned.
Jefferson County Coroner
Richard Greathouse and George
Nichols, Kentucky medical exam-
iner, were scheduled to announce
their findings today.
Remains of the 12th president,
including hair, bone scrapings and
fingernails, were analyzed for arse-
nic in Louisville, Ky. and at the
nation's largest research reactor in
Oak Ridge, Tenn., to test an
author's theory about Taylor's
death.
Clara Rising, who has
researched a book on Taylor, has
theorized he was poisoned for
Taylor
opposing the
spread of slav-
ery into the
Southwest.
Among those
she has pro-
posed as sus-
pects are Sen.
Henry Clay of
Kentucky and
Millard Fill-
more, who as
vice president
succeeded Taylor.
Taylor fell ill after attending the
July 4, 1850, dedication of the
Washington Monument and died a
few days later of what were
thought to be natural causes. Gas-
troenteritis was listed as the cause
of death.
Rising and others have said Tay-
lor's symptoms resembled those of
arsenic poisoning. They speculated
that the 65-year-old Taylor was
poisoned by arsenic put in fruit
he ate.
Rising agreed to pay the $1,200
for an exhumation, and on June 17
Taylor's crypt in Louisville was
opened and samples were taken.
The samples were dissolved in
acid and put through other pro-
cesses so they could be subjected to
a spectrograph, a device to separate
light given off by a substance into a
pattern of colors. No two materials
have the same spectrum.
In another test, samples were
loaded into tiny containers and
sent through the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory's 85-megawatt
High Flux Isotope Reactor.
There, the samples were bom-
barded with neutrons for one
minute. Later, the gamma rays
given off by sample will be ana-
lyzed by computer.
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VLS/LETTERS Thursday, july 4, mi
Scandal and the Heat Did Zachary Taylor In
To the Editor:
President Zachary Taylor did not
die of natural causes as you report
June 27. As Samuel Eliot Morison
puts it in his "Oxford History of the
American People," he died of a "com-
bination of official scandals, Wash-
ington heat and doctors."
After learning of a scandal in which
his Secretary of War made a fortune,
"Old Rough and Ready" was in a
depressed state on the Fourth of July
1850, when he was subjected to two
hours of oratory in the hot Washing-
ton sun. He attempted to cool off by
consuming huge amounts of cucum-
bers and iced milk. In the unhealthy
climate of Washington, with its open
sewers and flies, Taylor came down
with cholera morbus, or acute gastro-
enteritis as it is now called.
Morison believed that Taylor
"would probably have recovered if
left alone." Fat chance for a Presi-
dent. The capital physician, assisted
by a Baltimore quack, performed
what some might consider an assassi-
nation. As Morison writes, they
"drugged him with ipecac, calomel,
opium and quinine (at 40 grains a
whack), and bled and blistered him
too. On July 9 he gave up the ghost."
Who wouldn't? Jim Sampas
New York, June 27, 1991
•
Foul Play Suspected
To the Editor:
Re "President Zachary Taylor's
Body to be Tested for Signs of Ar-
senic" (front page, June 15).
In August 1871, Charles Francis
Hall, an American Arctic explorer,
pushed his vessel Polaris into what he
called the Lincoln Sea for a farthest-
north record. In the winter that fol-
lowed, Hall died suddenly; many of
his crew were disaffected and muti-
nous, and poisoning seemed likely.
Nearly a century later, Chauncey
Loomis, Hall's biographer, and a pa-
thologist exhumed Hall's body from
its Arctic grave and took tissue sam-
ples to the United States for analysis.
They proved heavily contaminated
with arsenic, though Hall's remains,
unlike President Taylor's, had not
been embalmed and contaminated
with undertaker's arsenic.
However, since arsenic was a sta-
ple of the Victorian pharmacopeia,
traces of it detected in a 19th-century
corpse do not, alas, necessarily indi-
cate foul play. In both Hall's and the
President's cases, arsenic dosage
may well have been self-adminis-
tered. John Maxtone-Graham
New York, June 15, 1991
•
Buchanan's Complaint
To the Editor:
Tests of the White House drinking
water to determine the .cause of the
autoimmune disorders afflicting
President and Mrs. Bush, as well as
their dog Millie, are not a first in
United States history. Such a problem
occurred before, killing the nephew of
one of President Bush's predecessors -Z
and nearly claiming the chief execu- »*
trye himself as he prepared to com- .
mit nearly one-third of the United "
States Army against a powerful ".-
desert ruler. "^
In the case of James Buchanan, the; «■*
affliction was not Graves' disease but Z~
a debilitating gastrointestinal coach- \.,
tion, probably paratyphoid fever. The: •>*
source was most likely contaminated
water at the National Hotel, a few
blocks from the White House, where *
President-elect Buchanan stayed be- . «
fore inauguration.
For Buchanan — then nearly 66,
but not as fit as President Bush at the
same age — the result was devastat-
ing, and he was nearly unable to
attend his own inauguration on
March 4, 1857.
During the opening weeks of his
Administration, Buchanan struggled -
to regain his health while making a
series of major but catastrophic deci-
sions: his reaction to the Supreme ' -
Court's ruling in the Dred Scott case;
his handling of civil upheaval in the
Kansas Territory, and his suppres-
sion of a perceived Mormon rebellion
in the neighboring Utah Territory. In
the Utah episode, Federal troops
were committed by May 1857 in what
grew into a disastrous two-brigade,
10-regiment affair that was the na-
tion's most extensive and expensive
military undertaking between the
Mexican and Civil wars.
Clearly, President Bush's fitness
and medical care are much superior
to those of his predecessors. Let us
hope as well that Washington's water
supply — notoriously unappealing for
generations — is also up to the chal-
lenge. William P. MacKinnon
Birmingham, Mich., June 11, 1991
The writer is an organizer of a confer-
ence at Franklin & Marshall and
Dickinson colleges on Buchanan.